GM, you continue to cloud the issue with points beyond your original claim. Focus.

You claimed that war was not a legal procedure. It is. I have established that, and you've even agreed that the declaration of war is as such. Now, with your help (and thank you for pointing this source out), since President Lincoln, the commander in chief, established the legal boundaries through a process: "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field, prepared by Francis Lieber, LL.D., Originally Issued as General Orders No. 100, Adjutant General's Office, 1863, Washington 1898: Government Printing Office", we have established that there are indeed legal bounds and definitions by which soldiers, even waaaaaay back in the Civil War, are to follow.

Although different legal processes aim to resolve many kinds of legal disputes, the legal procedures share some common features. All legal procedure, for example, is concerned with due process. Absent very special conditions, a court can not impose a penalty - civil or criminal - against an individual who has not received notice of a lawsuit being brought against them, or who has not received a fair opportunity to present evidence for themselves.

The standardization for the means by which cases are brought, parties are informed, evidence is presented, and facts are determined is intended to maximize the fairness of any proceeding. Nevertheless, strict procedural rules have certain drawbacks. For example, they impose specific time limitations upon the parties that may either hasten or (more frequently) slow down the pace of proceedings. Furthermore, a party who is unfamiliar with procedural rules may run afoul of guidelines that have nothing to do with the merits of the case, and yet the failure to follow these guidelines may severely damage the party's chances. Procedural systems are constantly torn between arguments that judges should have greater discretion in order to avoid the rigidity of the rules, and arguments that judges should have less discretion in order to avoid an outcome based more on the personal preferences of the judge than on the law or the facts.

Legal procedure, in a larger sense, is also designed to effect the best distribution of judicial resources. For example, in most courts of general jurisdiction in the United States, criminal cases are given priority over civil cases, because criminal defendants stand to lose their freedom, and should therefore be accorded the first opportunity to have their case heard.

1) A method or act that furthers a legal process. Procedures include filing complaints, serving documents, setting hearings, and conducting trials. 2) The established rule or series of steps that governs a civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution. (See also: civil procedure, criminal procedure)

This is an interesting defintion, because try as I might, I can't find this defintion anywhere other than wikipedia. You'll forgive me, since "legal procedure" is in neither version of Black's Law Dictionary (which is considered definitive) that I have access to (6th ed. on my desk as I write and 8th edition which is online), I think that perhaps this phrase, nor definition, is not, well, legal.

Although different legal processes aim to resolve many kinds of legal disputes, the legal procedures share some common features. All legal procedure, for example, is concerned with due process. Absent very special conditions, a court can not impose a penalty - civil or criminal - against an individual who has not received notice of a lawsuit being brought against them, or who has not received a fair opportunity to present evidence for themselves.

The standardization for the means by which cases are brought, parties are informed, evidence is presented, and facts are determined is intended to maximize the fairness of any proceeding. Nevertheless, strict procedural rules have certain drawbacks. For example, they impose specific time limitations upon the parties that may either hasten or (more frequently) slow down the pace of proceedings. Furthermore, a party who is unfamiliar with procedural rules may run afoul of guidelines that have nothing to do with the merits of the case, and yet the failure to follow these guidelines may severely damage the party's chances. Procedural systems are constantly torn between arguments that judges should have greater discretion in order to avoid the rigidity of the rules, and arguments that judges should have less discretion in order to avoid an outcome based more on the personal preferences of the judge than on the law or the facts.

Legal procedure, in a larger sense, is also designed to effect the best distribution of judicial resources. For example, in most courts of general jurisdiction in the United States, criminal cases are given priority over civil cases, because criminal defendants stand to lose their freedom, and should therefore be accorded the first opportunity to have their case heard.

In using my Black's Law Dictionary (6th. ed.), which again is considered definitive by most legal professionals), couldn't but notice that perhaps the website definition of procedure was good, but perhaps incomplete. I'll leave out the portions of the full definition which are similar to that which you posted, but I will include the following: "The judicial process for enforcing rights and duties recognized by substantive law and for justly administering redress for infraction of them."

This addition is important, because duty, as defined by Black's, reads, in part, as follows: "A human action which is exactly conformable to the laws which require us to obey them. Legal or moral obligation."

So, what this means is that the judicial process, whether or not it is a "legal process", can be used for enforcing infractions against those who fail to to do their duty... which includes legally and morally defined obligations.

Which means that it matters not if al Qaeda has signed a treaty, it matters that the United States has. It also means that the Supreme Court, and other courts, do in fact have a place in war.

1) A method or act that furthers a legal process. Procedures include filing complaints, serving documents, setting hearings, and conducting trials. 2) The established rule or series of steps that governs a civil lawsuit or criminal prosecution. (See also: civil procedure, criminal procedure)

"Which means that it matters not if al Qaeda has signed a treaty, it matters that the United States has."

If the US signs a treaty with Canada, does it also mean that the US has the same treaty obligations towards Zimbabwe, although Zimbabwe is not a signatory party to the treaty? Does the US also hold the same treaty obligations towards NGOs, such as the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders, although there is no legal agreement with those non-state actors?

WASHINGTON - Officials say CIA interrogators in secret overseas prisons developed the first strands of information that ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden's most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed's successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

The news is sure to reignite debate over whether the now-closed interrogation and detention program was successful. Former president George W. Bush authorized the CIA to use the harshest interrogation tactics in U.S. history. President Barack Obama closed the prison system.

Why? This is chanted over and over again like it's a article of faith. There are pragmatic reasons to treat enemy prisons of war well when we are fighting a nation-state's military. There are also pragmatic reasons to not provide those same protections to those who are not honorable soldiers, such as al qaeda.

"And your relunctance to follow the Constitution except when you find it convenient is pretty damning to your stance."

You refuse to argue the issue, GM. The reason is because, as I've said, if we fight for freedom, liberty, the expansion of democracy and the like, then we have to be the world's exemplar. If we fail to illustrate the benefits of freedom, etc. then there is no reason for us to fight. And, if we are fighting without staying true to the tenets we claim to be fighting for, then we, as a free nation, are no longer fighting... we are just another country in the world. Also, if we take issue with others mistreating our soldiers, and we do and SHOULD, then we should treat others well. That pesky leading by example thing.

As I've said, but you refuse to read, acknowledge, or understand, is that the Constitution binds and describes when it comes to war. And, since the highest law of the land helps to limit the methods of fighting a war, then your argument that law and war don't mix is full of holes that an ICBM could fly through.

It's looking like OBL was flat out executed by the SEALs, based on intel gained by waterboarding in secret prisons. Me, I'm quite pleased by this, of course. I'm wondering where the lawfare advocates are?

A victory celebration on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington on Sunday night.

Is this what justice looks like? Al-Qaida boss Osama bin Laden was killed on Sunday in a secret military operation in Pakistan. Americans are celebrating, but there are serious doubts about whether the targeted killing was legal under international law and the laws of war.

Now, I could care less as to the alleged legality/illegality of killing OBL. Where are you lawfare advocates on this?

Besides shooting an unarmed man, we were already guilty of breaking and entering.

Does this tie the current administration into a conspiracy after the fact of the original hate crime of waterboarding?

Were proportional numbers of Chistians, Jews and atheists among the 3 people waterboarded, or was this a deliberate targeting of Muslims?-----I don't know the laws of war, but is the concept of a disproportionate response, used to deter continued and future attacks, is that illegal as well?-----When you codify the limits of war, you are also publishing a handbook for the enemy to know your limits.

I don't know of a concept in contract law that can bind one party to the contract and not the other.

European journalists have focused on whether the killing was permissible under international law; some are now calling for an international commission to investigate the American action.

May 5, 2011 - 12:08 am - by Soeren Kern

Leading newspapers and magazines in Europe have provided saturation coverage of the death of Osama bin Laden. Although initial media reaction in Europe was overwhelmingly supportive of the American commando operation, media outlets in many countries quickly regained their composure and anti-Americanism has now returned as their default position.

European media, almost without exception, have focused particular attention on the news that bin Laden was not armed when he was killed by American operatives. Many Europeans have criticized what they describe as America’s “wild-west” concept of justice. Dozens of European newspapers have published lengthy philosophical essays by sundry intellectuals that examine the morality of bin Laden’s killing. Many argue that bin Laden should have been tried in a court of law.

In a reflection of the acute sense of moral superiority that is so common in contemporary Europe, secular analysts who are normally highly disdainful of Judeo-Christian moral codes have gone so far as to accuse the United States of violating the Fifth Commandment, without a hint of irony.

In Germany, the media reaction has been especially noteworthy for its near unanimous criticism of the American raid. Many German analysts say the American action was illegal under international law and some Germans have called for an international commission (similar to the Goldstone Commission in Israel) to investigate the U.S. foray into Pakistan. Unanswered remains the question of whether European activists will accuse U.S. President Barack Obama of war crimes and seek a warrant for his arrest as they did for George W. Bush, who recently was forced to cancel a trip to Switzerland.

In Britain, the left-wing Guardian newspaper ran a story titled “Osama bin Laden: U.S. Changes Account of al-Qaida Leader’s Death” which says:

The U.S. has backed away from its initial account of the killing of Osama bin Laden, which claimed that the al-Qaeda leader was carrying a weapon and fired at U.S. troops before he was shot dead.

* * *

[Q]uestions [are] being raised as to why Bin Laden was shot dead, and whether he was executed, rather than taken into custody.

Another Guardian story is titled “For 10 years, Osama bin Laden filled a gap left by the Soviet Union. Who will be the baddie now?” It says:

Neoconservatives, “terror journalists” and Osama bin Laden himself all had their own reasons to create a simple story of looming apocalypse.

* * *

But he was also in a strange way a godsend to the west. He simplified the world. When communism collapsed in 1989, the big story that had been hardwired into citizens of western countries – that of the global battle against a distant dark and evil force – came to an abrupt end. Understanding the world became much more complicated until, amid the confusion of a global economic crisis in 1998 and the hysterical spectacle of the Monica Lewinsky affair, bin Laden emerged as the mastermind behind the bombings of embassies in east Africa.

* * *

With bin Laden’s death maybe the spell is broken. It does feel that we are at the end of a way of looking at the world that makes no real sense any longer. But the big question is where will the next story come from? And who will be the next baddie? The truth is that the stories are always constructed by those who have the power. Maybe the next big story won’t come from America. Or possibly the idea that America’s power is declining is actually the new simplistic fantasy of our age.

Finally, the Guardian, echoing many other European newspapers, hopes the demise of bin Laden will accelerate the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.

A story in the Guardian titled “Osama bin Laden Killing Sparks Calls for Early Afghanistan Withdrawal” says:

The killing of Osama bin Laden has opened up divisions inside Barack Obama’s administration over whether the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, which is scheduled to begin this summer, should be bigger and faster than planned.

Politicians, soldiers and analysts from the U.S. to Afghanistan have debated whether the removal of the al-Qaida leader will shorten the war and open the way for reconciliation with the Taliban.

A fawning love letter to Obama by the left-wing Independent titled “Obama Has Shown the World Why it Fell in Love with Him” says:

He is not the Messiah, but he deserves to sleep easy in his bed, and leave the 3am angst to malevolent midgets like Donald Trump who will never trouble him again.

* * *

To those watching at home and around the world, he said, “a new dawn of American leadership is at hand.” After two years of hawkish foreign policy barely distinguishable from his predecessor’s, he has made good on that promise – not just with the killing of bin Laden, but by its manner. All the expert advice, we read, was to do what the Bushes, Clinton, Reagan and all other leaders in memory, recent or otherwise, would have done, which is flatten the compound and its environs with missiles.

* * *

People have criticised him for being ‘professorial’ as well as arrogant. They will do so no longer. He pondered for months, studied the research, weighed up the evidence, and reached the right conclusion. This is one cool, tough prof, and the lesson he has taught by example won’t quickly be unlearnt. In asymmetric warfare against a stateless enemy, invading sovereign states and slaughtering civilians is not the way to go.

If that sounds childishly simple, it defeated the simpleton Bush and his brutish cabal as they confused two-bit fake patriotism with American self-interest, and indiscriminate crusader cruelty with military wisdom. Let no one hear attempts to share Obama’s credit with Dubya without revulsion. He failed pitifully in this, as in almost every thing else, and even if water-boarding a key al-Qaeda operative helped to identify the courier, it cannot begin to justify holding boys of 14 and senile 89-year-olds at Guantanamo Bay. Guantanamo remains open. Obama hasn’t honoured on every promise, nor will. He is not the Messiah, although if the Kool Aid truck has redelivered at last, make mine an octuple.

Also at the Independent, Robert Fisk, the veteran Middle East correspondent, like many of his left-wing colleagues, has tried to promote conspiracy theories.

One essay by Fisk is titled “If this is a U.S. Victory, Does that mean its Forces Should go Home Now?” It says:

And there’s Bin Laden’s secret burial in the Arabian Sea. Was this planned before the attack on Bin Laden, with the clear plan to kill rather than capture him? And if it was carried out “according to Islamic rights” – the dead man’s body washed and placed in a white shroud – it must have taken a long time for the officer on the USS Carl Vinson to devise a 50-minute religious ceremony and arrange for an Arabic-speaking sailor to translate it.

Another Fisk conspiracy theory is titled “Was He Betrayed? Of course. Pakistan Knew Bin Laden’s Hiding Place all Along.” It says:

A single shot to the head, we were told. But the body’s secret flight to Afghanistan, an equally secret burial at sea? The weird and creepy disposal of the body – no shrines, please – was almost as creepy as the man and his vicious organisation.

* * *

The Americans were drunk with joy.

* * *

By midday yesterday, I had three phone calls from Arabs, all certain that it was Bin Laden’s double who was killed by the Americans – just as I know many Iraqis who still believe that Saddam’s sons were not killed in 2003, nor Saddam really hanged. In due course, al-Qaeda will tell us. Of course, if we are all wrong and it was a double, we’re going to be treated to yet another videotape from the real Bin Laden – and President Barack Obama will lose the next election.

The center-right Daily Telegraph, in an essay titled “How Many More Details of the bin Laden Raid will need to be ‘Clarified’?” says:

Oh dear, and it was all going so well. The White House has just “clarified” crucial aspects of the special forces operation that ended with the execution of Osama bin Laden. Specifically, it has pointed out that the leader of al-Qaeda was not firing an AK-47 when he was shot dead and that his wife was neither killed nor used as a human shield. Those three vivid details of the raid were the ones that dominated newspaper front pages across the world – and not one of them turns out to be true.

The glaring difference between the two versions was being attributed to “confusion” by the White House. What officials called the “fact pattern” – and we would call the truth – was only emerging as more of the participants were debriefed. This is all rather troubling. The fog of war does lead to confusion and mistakes but wouldn’t it have been more sensible if the White House had debriefed all the participants before pumping out headline-grabbing but inaccurate accounts of the action?

Also in the Telegraph, an essay titled “The Death of Osama bin Laden is American Rough Justice, Wild West-Style” says:

America is a nation of laws, but beneath all that fine sentiment about procedure there is a stronger hunger for natural justice. One is put in mind of the great, 19th-century historian Hubert Howe Bancroft, whose work on the Wild West discovered and defended an American tradition of personal, violent justice. Lynch law and vendettas, he wrote, were the informal exercise of a people’s will to obtain a verdict that the state was currently powerless to achieve. Europeans had been emasculated by their reliance upon formal law and bureaucracy. It was in the American wilderness that the individual was once again freed to pursue their own kind of rough justice. The assassination of Osama is as American as the shootout that killed Billy the Kid. It is a personal Wild West drama writ-large on the global stage.

Then there’s the continental European media.

In France, in an analysis titled “Democracy Strikes Back: A French View On America After Bin Laden,” Dominique Moïsi, a respected French analyst of transatlantic relations, says:

The death of Osama bin Laden allows the United States to redefine crucial relationships: with itself, and with the rest of the world.

* * *

This wasn’t a case of America showing off its superior technology; it was neither drones nor missiles that ended the hunt for bin Laden. It was the audacity, courage and determination of its soldiers that made the difference in “avenging” the innocent victims of 9/11.

* * *

America might have entered a relative phase of decline, and its staggering debt places the nation in an undoubtedly uncomfortable situation of dependence on China. But it nonetheless still remains the only great “multi-dimensional” power. Neither China, nor India, nor Russia, and even less so the European Union, have the capacity or the will to undertake an operation like the one that led to the death of Osama bin Laden.

* * *

“Hard power,” the power to compel, is indispensable, and “soft power,” the power to convince, is not sufficient by itself. This is an essential lesson for Europe, but does it come too late?

Americans retrieved old notions of vengeful and speedy justice that they had never completely lost since the conquest of the West. “We got him,” proclaimed banners, in response to Barack Obama’s own words announcing that U.S. commandos had killed Osama bin Laden. “Justice has been done,” the president said simply.

* * *

Just as the Japanese had underestimated the terrifying consequences that their treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 would have for them four years later, bin Laden may have underestimated the anger and the desire for revenge that he would arouse by striking the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

The images coming from the U.S. were reminiscent of the scenes following Saddam Hussein’s capture in December 2003, when he was hiding in a hole in a farm near the town of Tikrit. What followed was a degrading treatment of the Iraqi president on the world’s stage, allegedly to determine his identity. In fact, the show was meant to demonstrate the power of the United States.

* * *

The message was clear: we can catch anyone, and no one is safe. This time, it was Osama bin Laden who had his turn – the al-Qaeda leader was the No. 1 public enemy in the United States. A $50 million bounty had been issued for his capture: “dead or alive.”

* * *

President Obama personally gave the order for the mission, and Americans are now celebrating as if killing Osama bin Laden had solved all of their problems in one stroke – high unemployment, runaway national debt, failed health care reform, the country’s tarnished prestige in the world.

* * *

The execution of Osama bin Laden – or it is better to speak of murder? – allows Americans to forget their troubles for a moment. It is like a balm on the wounds of the nation. In the rush of emotion, no one is asking the questions that need to be asked. For example – was it really Osama bin Laden who was killed? Is it possible that it was one of his doubles?

* * *

In the United States, the accused have the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty. Guilt or innocence can only be decided in a proper court of law. Osama bin Laden was given the “short shrift.” He did not have the opportunity to defend himself from the accusations made against him, he had no fair trial, no lawyer. He was probably not even asked to surrender. Such a procedure is unworthy of a constitutional state. Even Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the Final Solution of the Jewish question, was given due process before he was sentenced to death.

* * *

If we ask ourselves, “cui bono?” (“who benefits?”), the answer is clear: the United States. The superpower was caught cold by the recent uprisings in the Arab world, it has failed to solve the Palestinian question, it has not even come to terms with inflation at home. Something needed to happen.

* * *

The timing was not perfect, but apparently no one wanted to wait until the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

* * *

At the very least, we should now demand the creation of an independent commission to investigate whether or not, and under what circumstances, Osama bin Laden was killed. Only then will we know for certain and prevent the spread of conspiracy theories like the ones that have developed about events such as the moon landing and 9/11.

* * *

The leader of such a commission would need to be an experienced and impartial jurist. For example, Richard Goldstone, the former Chief Justice of South Africa, who investigated Israel’s latest operation in Gaza.

The left-wing magazine Spiegel, in an article titled “He is Dead: Hurray?” says:

Much has been said about the Christian-influenced West’s civilizational superiority to the Islamic countries. But what is happening in the United States gives a different impression. When Americans celebrate the death of bin Laden with dancing and shouting over loudspeakers, it is horrifying to us [Germans/Europeans]. The bizarre cheers show us that American society is alien to us. …

* * *

“In God We Trust” is on every U.S. dollar bill, but this is not the forgiving God of the New Testament God – but rather the vengeful God of the Old Testament. In this country [Germany], rehabilitation is the goal of society, in the U.S. it is retaliation, including the death penalty.

* * *

That the death penalty may be imposed on bin Laden, even without trial, if only the crime and anger are big enough, and that their enforcement is enthusiastically applauded, proves how deeply the “eye for an eye” ideology is rooted in American society. Resentment may be powerful – morally superior it is not.

Also in Germany, the Legal Tribune, which is affiliated with Spiegel, published an article titled “On the Problem of the State’s ‘License to Kill’” which says:

Was the United States entitled to liquidate their No. 1 public enemy so easily and without a trial? When a state kills specific individuals without first trying them in a court of law, this is an illegal action. Beyond the question of whether the victim may have deserved his fate, human rights laws prohibit the killing of persons without following legal processes, such as those established by Article 6, Paragraph 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights dated 16 December 1966. For this reason, the U.S. military drone attacks in Pakistan, as well as Mossad hit squads to kill a Hamas arms dealer in Dubai in January 2010, are a violation of human rights. In addition, they are a major breach of international legal principle of non-interference; see for example Article 2 of the UN Charter.

The left-wing magazine Stern, in an article titled “Were They Allowed to do This?” says: “Osama bin Laden’s death is a political success for the USA. But were U.S. commandos allowed to just kill the leader of al-Qaeda? Or was this a case of ‘might makes right’?” Stern then lays out three legal scenarios: 1) Yes, it was legal because it was a police action; 2) Yes, it was legal because he was involved in a war; and 3) No, it was an illegal execution. The magazine prefers option 3 and says: “The U.S. government has so far only said the operation adhered to legal standards. It is still unclear what standards Obama’s lawyers mean.”

Many Americans are celebrating the death of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden with euphoria and pure hate. Some Americans have expressed shame over the empty triumphalism.

* * *

Time, the old, once proud, now ailing news magazine, has announced that bin Laden will be on the magazine’s cover for a fourth time, this time with a red cross over a rogue portrait. Adolf Hitler, in its issue of May 7, 1945, was the first to have the privilege. Then, after a long break came Saddam Hussein (2003) and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (2006). … The American writer Mark Twain was the first to point out the conflicted American psyche when he wrote: “I never wished a man to die, but I have read many obituaries with great pleasure.”

The centrist Süddeutsche Zeitung, in an essay titled “Applause for Bloody Revenge,” says:

Obama argues that by killing bin Laden “justice” has been restored. But many say the U.S. president has appealed to an “Old Testament sense of justice,” that is to say, eye for eye, tooth for tooth. This is actually “revenge” and has no international legal legitimacy.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, a pastor’s daughter and the leader of a party that calls itself Christian. One should think that the Ten Commandments serve as their guide. For example, the fifth, “You shall not kill.” Now this is a recommendation on which every civilized human being can agree.

* * *

But how do we fit this with the message of the Chancellor: “I am delighted that we managed to kill bin Laden.” She is happy about the violent death of a terrorist, but who after all was also a human being. Was she paying attention in church when the pastor taught about the Fifth Commandment?

* * *

In the case of Merkel, the contradiction between the Christian talk and actual conduct is especially noteworthy. But the double standards of Western society is reflected everywhere. Anyone who claims to fight for the rule of law should not trample on its principles.

The centrist Die Zeit, in an article titled “Bin Laden Should Have Been Tried in a Court of Law,” says: “Killing bin Laden was a strategic mistake. A trial of the al-Qaida chief would have demonstrated the superiority of the democratic system. … The U.S. has missed an historic opportunity. … The Western world was in a similar situation once before. How great was the fear of the Allies before the Nüremberg trials. It was feared that Goering’s monologues would renew the enthusiasm of Germans for their slogans. … But the Allies went through it, according to the rule of law and as fair as possible. Today the Nüremburg trials are considered to have sown the seeds for the establishment of the International Criminal Court. … A trial of Osama bin Laden would have sent a very clever signal to the world community, which often has doubts about the principles of democracy (and those of America). It would have been a signal to the democracy movements in Arab countries. … A trial of bin Laden would have shown how much superior the rule of law is to an Al Qaeda-like theocracy.”

In Spain, the center-right ABC, in a commentary titled “Mourners of the New Che,” sums it up:

The reaction of the most ardent supporters of Socialist Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and his media sycophants put in evidence the sinister result of years of Zapatero worship among certain sectors of the left. They were unable to congratulate the American president, whom they have worshipped as a “secular saint” in the mistaken belief that he was one of their own. The traditional knee-jerk anti-Americanism promoted by the radical left in our time has led to truly grotesque digressions on the relevance of the death of Osama bin Laden. Some have not shied away from defending bin Laden as the new Che. Making icons of murderers. Mourners crying out against the villainy of the “Evil Empire.” We should not be surprised. They are the same ones that support flotillas to Gaza in support of Hamas, the Palestinian terrorist organization that yesterday condemned “the assassination of the great Arab fighter hero.”

As the passage in this Spanish magazine concludes, “the phobia of freedom makes strange bedfellows,” indeed.

When this thread got heated up, this was the post I most agreed with: Crafty wrote, "I am enjoying being a fly on the wall for this one".

Imagine the 'legal' reaction to the case of bin Laden if it was Bush instead of Obama. As I wrote earlier, isn't 'breaking and entering already a crime, and kidnapping! The kill is just an additional charge if the whole operation is 'illegal'. Where were the legalists when the 50 million dead or alive was issued? What happened to the American opponents of the death penalty during the celebration?

My question earlier about disproportional response still stands, but this was this opposite. One guilty man shot for 3000 innocent killed.

The point about right to answer the charges is ludicrous. He had 10 years and did nothing but take credit and issue more killing orders. Had he denied, surrendered and asked for a civilian trial with all rights extended as a condition of his surrender - that is another way this could have come down, and probably avoided 10 years of war in Afghanistan, among other things.

The question to me (in war law) comes down more to jurisdiction rather than law. Water boarding is a terrible thing to apply indiscriminately, but it wasn't. It is NOT torture in the extreme sense of term and the word in terms of war crimes is being used in the extreme sense. There are arguments on both sides of that so the question is who decides.

The European seculars point out the 5th Commandment, but on the forum we decided that means Thou shalt not murder, not thou shalt not kill. One obvious distinction is self defense, and there are arguably other differences between killing and murder such as justifiable, self defense war and a legal and justifiable criminal death penalty.

Self defense of a nation, Israel and US for examples here, requires deterrence and consequence. This was an attempt at both. It is not revenge, it is just tying all attacks against the United States to a consequence for the purpose of preventing / deterring future attacks.

Reading someone his rights, speedy trial, hiding across a foreign border, right to confront your accusers - these don't apply in war.

My knowledge of the Geneva convention, like most Americans, comes mostly from hearing Col. Hogan win arguments with Col. Klink, as if the regime of Hitler was striving in all ways to comply with international law.

What exactly have we agreed to as it applies to this band of terrorism and who is the judge?

If we have signed treaties or agreed to laws that prevent us from defending our nation, that prevent former President from traveling to Europe because he acted to defend and secure our country, we need to go back and start rescinding treaties. Article 2 of the UN Charter is mentioned in the Europe piece. Seriously, if there is a contradiction there with defending the United States of America against all attackers, we need to get out of that organization and start over.

If laws govern war, let's get the laws updated to match the threats we face.

Wallace To Donilon: If Shooting Bin Laden Is OK, 'Why Can't You Do Waterboarding?'

Wallace: We'll stipulate -- I think we'll all stipulate -- that bin Laden was a monster, but why is shooting an unarmed man in the face legal and proper while enhanced interrogation, including waterboarding of a detainee under very strict controls and limits -- why is that over the line?

Donilon: Well, let me talk first about the first half of the statement that you made. Again, the president met with the operators yesterday at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, and here are the facts. We are at war with al-Qaeda. Osama bin Laden is the emir or commander, indeed the only leader of al-Qaeda in its 22 year history. This was his residence and operational compound. Our forces entered that compound and were fired upon in the pitch black. It's an organization that uses IEDs and suicide vests and booby traps and all manner of other kinds of destructive capabilities.

Wallace: Mr. Donilon, let me just make my point. I’m not asking you why it was OK to shoot Osama bin Laden. I fully understand the threat. And I’m not second-guessing the SEALs. What I am second guessing is, if that’s OK, why can’t you do waterboarding? Why can’t you do enhanced interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was just as bad an operator as Osama bin Laden?

Donilon: Because, well, our judgment is that it’s not consistent with our values, not consistent and not necessary in terms of getting the kind of intelligence that we need.

Wallace: But shooting bin Laden in the head is consistent with our values?

Donilon: We are at war with Osama bin Laden.

Wallace: We’re at war with Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Donilon: It was a military operation, right? It was absolutely appropriate for the SEALs to take the action -- for the forces to take the action that they took in this military operation against a military target.

Wallace: But why is it inappropriate to get information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?

Donilon: I didn’t say it was inappropriate to get information from Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

Wallace: You said it was against our values.

Donilon: I think that the techniques are something that there’s been a policy debate about, and our administration has made our views known on that.

I am sorry that it was necessary that I step away at the same time the forum was burning with desire for my opinion. I am very sorry to have left you hanging, GM!

What is that you want to hear? Please be specific.

I will volunteer this, to begin with: am I pleased that OBL is dead? Sure. Am I especially happy with the means? No, not so much. You are right that it seems that President Obama overstepped the bounds of war. My issue, and this is true regardless of party affiliation, is that I believe that presidents power grab. As one who is concerned with constitutional limits yourself, GM, I am sure you understand this.

I should point out that not everyone thinks that "enhanced interrogation" reaped benefits by leading to bin Laden.

Torture apologists are reaching precisely the wrong conclusion from the back-story of the hunt for Osama bin Laden, say experienced interrogators and intelligence professionals.

Defenders of the Bush administration’s interrogation policies have claimed vindication from reports that bin Laden was tracked down in small part due to information received from brutalized detainees some six to eight years ago.

But that sequence of events -- even if true -- doesn’t demonstrate the effectiveness of torture, these experts say. Rather, it indicates bin Laden could have been caught much earlier had those detainees been interrogated properly.

"I think that without a doubt, torture and enhanced interrogation techniques slowed down the hunt for bin Laden," said an Air Force interrogator who goes by the pseudonym Matthew Alexander and located Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, in 2006.

It now appears likely that several detainees had information about a key al Qaeda courier -- information that might have led authorities directly to bin Laden years ago. But subjected to physical and psychological brutality, "they gave us the bare minimum amount of information they could get away with to get the pain to stop, or to mislead us," Alexander told The Huffington Post.

"We know that they didn’t give us everything, because they didn’t provide the real name, or the location, or somebody else who would know that information," he said.

In a 2006 study by the National Defense Intelligence College, trained interrogators found that traditional, rapport-based interviewing approaches are extremely effective with even the most hardened detainees, whereas coercion consistently builds resistance and resentment.

"Had we handled some of these sources from the beginning, I would like to think that there’s a good chance that we would have gotten this information or other information," said Steven Kleinman, a longtime military intelligence officer who has extensively researched, practiced and taught interrogation techniques.

"By making a detainee less likely to provide information, and making the information he does provide harder to evaluate, they hindered what we needed to accomplish," said Glenn L. Carle, a retired CIA officer who oversaw the interrogation of a high-level detainee in 2002.

But the discovery and killing of bin Laden was enough for defenders of the Bush administration to declare that their policies had been vindicated.

Liz Cheney, daughter of the former vice president, quickly issued a statement declaring that she was "grateful to the men and women of America’s intelligence services who, through their interrogation of high-value detainees, developed the information that apparently led us to bin Laden."

John Yoo, the lead author of the "Torture Memos," wrote in the Wall Street Journal that bin Laden's death "vindicates the Bush administration, whose intelligence architecture marked the path to bin Laden's door."

Former Bush secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld declared that "the information that came from those individuals was critically important."

The Obama White House pushed back against that conclusion this week.

"The bottom line is this: If we had some kind of smoking-gun intelligence from waterboarding in 2003, we would have taken out Osama bin Laden in 2003," Tommy Vietor, spokesman for the National Security Council, told The New York Times.

Chronological details of the hunt for bin Laden remain murky, but piecing together various statements from administration and intelligence officials, it appears the first step may have been the CIA learning the nickname of an al Qaeda courier -- Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti -- from several detainees picked up after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Then, in 2003, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), the 9/11 mastermind, was captured, beaten, slammed into walls, shackled in stress positions and made to feel like he was drowning 183 times in a month. When asked about al-Kuwaiti, however, KSM denied that the he had anything to do with al Qaeda.

In 2004, officials detained a man named Hassan Ghul and brought him to one of the CIA’s black sites, where he identified al-Kuwaiti as a key courier.

A third detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, was arrested in 2005 and under CIA interrogation apparently denied knowing al-Kuwaiti at all.

Once the courier's real name was established -- about four years ago, and by other means -- intelligence analysts stayed on the lookout for him. After he was picked up on a monitored phone call last year, he ultimately led authorities to bin Laden.

The link between the Bush-era interrogation regime and bin Laden’s killing, then, appears tenuous -- especially since two of the three detainees in question apparently provided deceptive information about the courier even after being interrogated under durress.

"It simply strains credulity to suggest that a piece of information that may or may not have been gathered eight years ago somehow directly led to a successful mission on Sunday. That's just not the case," said White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.

But for Alexander, Kleinman and others, the key takeaway is not just that the torture didn't work, but that it was actually counterproductive.

"The question is: What else did KSM have?" Alexander asked. And he’s pretty sure he knows the answer: KSM knew the courier’s real name, "or he knew who else knew his real name, or he knew how to find him -- and he didn’t give any of that information," Alexander said.

Alexander’s book, "Kill or Capture," chronicles how the non-coercive interrogation of a dedicated al Qaeda member led to Zarqawi’s capture.

"I’m 100 percent confident that a good interrogator would have gotten additional leads" from KSM, Alexander said.

"Interrogation is all about getting access to someone’s uncorrupted memory," explained Kleinman, who as an Air Force reserve colonel in Iraq in 2003 famously tried, but failed, to stop the rampant, systemic abuse of detainees there. "And you can’t get access to someone’s uncorrupted memory by applying psychological, physical or emotional force."

Quite to the contrary, coercion is known to harden resistance. "It makes an individual hate you and find any way in their mind to fight back," and it inhibits their recall, Kleinman said. Far preferable, he said, is a "more thoughtful, culturally-enlightened, science-based approach."

"I never saw enhanced interrogation techniques work in Iraq; I never saw even harsh techniques work in Iraq," Alexander said. "In every case I saw them slow us down, and they were always counterproductive to trying to get people to cooperate."

Carle, who was not a trained interrogator, said he came to recognize that interrogation was a lot like something he did know how to do: manage intelligence assets in the field.

"Perverse and imbalanced as the relationship is between interrogator and detainee, it’s nonetheless a human relationship, and building upon that, manipulating the person, dealing straight with the person, simply coming to understand the person and vice versa, one can move forward," he told reporters on a conference call Thursday.

Carle’s upcoming book, "The Interrogator," chronicles his growing doubts about his orders from his superiors.

"The methods that I was urged to embrace, I found first-hand -- putting aside the moral and legal issues, which we really cannot put aside -- from a practical and a tactical and a strategic sense and a moral and legal one, the methods are counterproductive," he said.

"They do not work," he added. "They cause retrograde motion from what you’re seeking to accomplish. They increase resentment, not cooperation. They increase the difficulty in assessing what information you do hear is valid. They increase the likelihood that you will be given disinformation and have opposition from the person that you’re interrogating, across the board."

Carle said the detainee he worked with regressed when coerced. "All it did was increase resentment and misery," he said.

Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff under former secretary of state Colin Powell, said, "I’d be naive if I said it never worked," referring to enhanced interrogation techniques.

"Of course, occasionally it works, Wilkerson said. "But most of the time, what torture is useful for is confessions. It’s not good for getting actionable intelligence."

Experts agree that torture is particularly good at one thing: eliciting false confessions.

Bush-era interrogation techniques, were modeled after methods used by Chinese Communists to extract confessions from captured U.S. servicemen that they could then use for propaganda during the Korean War.

"Somehow our government decided that ... these were effective means of obtaining information," Carle said. "Nothing could be further from the truth."

At a hearing in Guantanamo, several years after being waterboarded, KSM described how he would lie -- specifically about bin Laden’s whereabouts -- just to make the torture stop. "I make up stories," Mohammed said. "Where is he? I don't know. Then, he torture me," KSM said of an interrogator. "Then I said, 'Yes, he is in this area.'"

There are many other reasons to be skeptical of the argument that torture can lead to actionable intelligence, and specifically that enhanced interrogation led investigators to bin Laden.

Many of the positive accomplishments once cited in defense of enhanced interrogation have since been debunked.

And though its defenders are now trying to talk up the significance of the earlier intelligence, around the time of al-Libi’s interrogation, the CIA was not stepping up the hunt for bin Laden. Instead, it was closing down the unit that had been dedicated to hunting bin Laden and his top lieutenants.

This new scenario hardly supports a defense of torture on the grounds that it’s appropriate in "ticking time bomb" scenarios, Alexander said. "Show me an interrogator who says that eight years is a good result."

The interrogation experts also noted the significant role Yoo, Rumsfeld and former Vice President Cheney each played in opening the door to controversial interrogation practices.

Wilkerson has long argued that there is ample evidence showing that "the Office of the Vice President bears responsibility for creating an environment conducive to the acts of torture and murder committed by U.S. forces in the war on terror."

Yoo wrote several memos that explicitly sanctioned measures that many have deemed constitute torture, and the memo from Rumsfeld authorizing the use of stress positions, hooding and dogs was widely seen as a sign to the troops that the "gloves could come off."

"These guys are trying to save their reputations, for one thing," Alexander said. "They have, from the beginning, been trying to prevent an investigation into war crimes."

"They don’t want to talk about the long term consequences that cost the lives of Americans," Alexander added. The way the U.S. treated its prisoners "was al-Qaeda’s number-one recruiting tool and brought in thousands of foreign fighters who killed American soldiers," Alexander said. "And who want to live with that on their conscience?"

From Bush himself on down, the defenders of his interrogation regime have long insisted that it never amounted to torture. But waterboarding, the single most controversial aspect of Bush's interrogation regime, has been an archetypal form of torture dating back to the Spanish Inquisition. It involves strapping someone to a board and simulating drowning them. The U.S. government has historically considered it a war crime.

One can quibble over the proper term for some of the other tactics employed with official sanction, including forced nudity, isolation, bombardment with noise and light, deprivation of food, forced standing, repeated beatings, applications of cold water, the use of dogs, slamming prisoners into walls, shackling them in stress positions and keeping them awake for as long as 180 hours. But they comprise violations of human dignity, as codified by the United Nations -- and championed by the U.S. government -- ever since World War II.

Many have argued that whether torture works or not is irrelevant -- that it is flatly illegal, immoral, and contrary to core American principles -- and that even if it were effective, it would still be anathema.

But that torture is unparalleled in its ability to obtain intelligence is the central argument of its defenders. To concede that torture doesn’t work -- as Alexander, Kleinman and Carle, among others, say -- would be to forfeit the whole game. It would be admitting that cruelty was both the means and the end.

I'm reminded of a case I worked on that still ticks me off because it was a nothing case and I tried everything in the book to get a confession and nada. It was a stupid criminal mischief case and I wasn't even the primary, I was asked to do the followup. I interview the one and only suspect. Now, I know she's lying, and she knows I know she's lying.

At first, I worked at it to brush up on my skills and I had nothing else going on at that moment, after a while, it became a matter of pride. I'm using every approach I've learned in every class I've taken. Nothing works.

Now, in the big picture, this really was meaningless. hell at my dept. it was meaningless. The other officer sitting in on the interview is looking at me like "WTF", let's wrap this up and get out of here".

So, without anymore meaningless details, my point is, all the interview and interrogation techniques available to US law enforcement are sometimes ineffective. Some domestic criminals are smart enough to lawyer up right out of the gate. Now, even in the most severe criminal cases, this is bad, but not catastrophic at a national level. This does not mean I in any way endorse "enhanced interrogation" for domestic law enforcement. I think that would do much more harm than good for us as a society.

Warfighting is different. Finding bin Laden is different, stopping a nuke from detonating in am American city is different. This is why the CIA and military are at the forefront in this war instead of the FBI.

I am not persuaded by the Huffington Post piece that quotes pseudonym authors and political spokesmen as saying that we may or may not have been able to get this same information other ways, while intermingling the terms enhanced and torture as having the same meaning. Nor am I impressed with the false, straw argument that if [the Bush people] had all the information back then, why didn't they go get him. No one said they did.

These techniques led to these pieces of a puzzle and no interragatees were injured. People could instead be thankful, but that doesn't sell books.

Look at what used to happen at Abu Ghraib with electric currents running through basement water with increasing levels of current, or perhaps the story of Dujail for which Saddam was hanged for definitions of real torture. They weren't using sleep deprivation or trickery.

Who has the author 'built rapport' with that is comparable to the guy who destroyed 4 fully loaded jetairliners, the trade towers at the opening of business, the Pentagon, and personally beheaded Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl for the making of a video? Again, he should be thankful that what was done in questioning had any success.

"But they comprise violations of human dignity, as codified by the United Nations..."

The statement above seems intentionally vague. In all this discussion, I am not seeing what the international laws are or really who has the jurisdiction. The attorney general of the United States sought out and published detailed opinions of what constitutes torture and what constitutes enhanced techniques within the bounds of legality and decency. (Every liberal conveniently disagrees though they enjoy the period of relative safety that has followed.) No appendages were cut off, no eyes poked out, no beheading. Seriously, who do these people think we are dealing with?

What laws, what court and what rights of due process was former President Bush going to get if he had traveled to Switzerland and been arrested by 'international police' for performing best efforts to protect the United States of America?

In contract law, an agreement can't bind one party without binding the other. Treaties and international accords are different? KSM has rights?? I've said earlier, if these organizations' authority supersede US law, let's get out now.

I write in response to those who have raised questions regarding the lawfulness of the recent United States operation against Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. United States officials have recounted the facts of that well-publicized incident, most recently in the interview of President Obama on CBS News 60 Minutes on May 8, 2011. In conducting the bin Laden raid, the United States acted in full compliance with the legal principles previously set forth in a speech that I gave to the American Society of International Law on March 25, 2010, in which I confirmed that “n …all of our operations involving the use of force, including those in the armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces, the Obama Administration is committed by word and deed to conducting ourselves in accordance with all applicable law.” The relevant excerpts of that speech are set forth below:

The United States agrees that it must conform its actions to all applicable law. As I have explained, as a matter of international law, the United States is in an armed conflict with al-Qaeda, as well as the Taliban and associated forces, in response to the horrific 9/11 attacks, and may use force consistent with its inherent right to self-defense under international law. As a matter of domestic law, Congress authorized the use of all necessary and appropriate force through the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF). These domestic and international legal authorities continue to this day.

As recent events have shown, al-Qaeda has not abandoned its intent to attack the United States, and indeed continues to attack us. Thus, in this ongoing armed conflict, the United States has the authority under international law, and the responsibility to its citizens, to use force, including lethal force, to defend itself, including by targeting persons such as high-level al-Qaeda leaders who are planning attacks. As you know, this is a conflict with an organized terrorist enemy that does not have conventional forces, but that plans and executes its attacks against us and our allies while hiding among civilian populations. That behavior simultaneously makes the application of international law more difficult and more critical for the protection of innocent civilians. Of course, whether a particular individual will be targeted in a particular location will depend upon considerations specific to each case, including those related to the imminence of the threat, the sovereignty of the other states involved, and the willingness and ability of those states to suppress the threat the target poses. In particular, this Administration has carefully reviewed the rules governing targeting operations to ensure that these operations are conducted consistently with law of war principles, including:

• First, the principle of distinction, which requires that attacks be limited to military objectives and that civilians or civilian objects shall not be the object of the attack; and

• Second, the principle of proportionality, which prohibits attacks that may be expected to cause incidental loss of civilian life, injury to civilians, damage to civilian objects, or a combination thereof, that would be excessive in relation to the concrete and direct military advantage anticipated.

In U.S. operations against al-Qaeda and its associated forces … great care is taken to adhere to these principles in both planning and execution, to ensure that only legitimate objectives are targeted and that collateral damage is kept to a minimum.

…ome have suggested that the very act of targeting a particular leader of an enemy force in an armed conflict must violate the laws of war. But individuals who are part of such an armed group are belligerents and, therefore, lawful targets under international law. During World War II, for example, American aviators tracked and shot down the airplane carrying the architect of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, who was also the leader of enemy forces in the Battle of Midway. This was a lawful operation then, and would be if conducted today. Indeed, targeting particular individuals serves to narrow the focus when force is employed and to avoid broader harm to civilians and civilian objects.

…

[In addition] some have argued that the use of lethal force against specific individuals fails to provide adequate process and thus constitutes unlawful extrajudicial killing. But a state that is engaged in an armed conflict or in legitimate self-defense is not required to provide targets with legal process before the state may use lethal force. Our procedures and practices for identifying lawful targets are extremely robust, and advanced technologies have helped to make our targeting even more precise. In my experience, the principles of distinction and proportionality that the United States applies are not just recited at meetings. They are implemented rigorously throughout the planning and execution of lethal operations to ensure that such operations are conducted in accordance with all applicable law.

… Finally, some have argued that our targeting practices violate domestic law, in particular, the long-standing domestic ban on assassinations. But under domestic law, the use of lawful weapons systems—consistent with the applicable laws of war—for precision targeting of specific high-level belligerent leaders when acting in self-defense or during an armed conflict is not unlawful, and hence does not constitute “assassination.”

In sum, let me repeat: … this Administration is committed to ensuring that the targeting practices that I have described are lawful.” (emphasis in original)

Given bin Laden’s unquestioned leadership position within al Qaeda and his clear continuing operational role, there can be no question that he was the leader of an enemy force and a legitimate target in our armed conflict with al Qaeda. In addition, bin Laden continued to pose an imminent threat to the United States that engaged our right to use force, a threat that materials seized during the raid have only further documented. Under these circumstances, there is no question that he presented a lawful target for the use of lethal force. By enacting the AUMF, Congress expressly authorized the President to use military force “against … persons [such as bin Laden, whom the President] determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001 …in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such … persons” (emphasis added). Moreover, the manner in which the U.S. operation was conducted—taking great pains both to distinguish between legitimate military objectives and civilians and to avoid excessive incidental injury to the latter—followed the principles of distinction and proportionality described above, and was designed specifically to preserve those principles, even if it meant putting U.S. forces in harm’s way. Finally, consistent with the laws of armed conflict and U.S. military doctrine, the U.S. forces were prepared to capture bin Laden if he had surrendered in a way that they could safely accept. The laws of armed conflict require acceptance of a genuine offer of surrender that is clearly communicated by the surrendering party and received by the opposing force, under circumstances where it is feasible for the opposing force to accept that offer of surrender. But where that is not the case, those laws authorize use of lethal force against an enemy belligerent, under the circumstances presented here.

In sum, the United States acted lawfully in carrying out its mission against Osama bin Laden.

Did Enhanced Interrogation of the 20th Hijacker Help Identify Bin Laden’s Courier?

8:00 AM, May 3, 2011 • By THOMAS JOSCELYN

The exact identity of Osama bin Laden’s courier, who unwittingly led to his boss’s demise, remains to be confirmed, but CNN reports that it was a Kuwaiti known as Abu Ahmad al Kuwaiti. If that’s true, then obviously it wasn’t the courier mentioned in the leaked Gitmo file written for Abu Faraj al Libbi’s case. We’ll have to wait for more details from intelligence officials in the coming days before concluding this is right, but CNN’s reporting makes sense. Here’s why.

Obama administration officials have told the press that the courier was connected to two high-level al Qaeda operatives: Abu Faraj al Libbi and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Yesterday, Michael Isikoff reported that “20th hijacker” Mohammed al Qahtani began cooperating with U.S. intelligence officials after being put through a series of humiliating interrogations. According to an unnamed U.S. intelligence official cited by Isikoff, Qahtani “started to cooperate and, for a while, provided a wealth of information about al-Qaida, including references to the courier in question.”

Picking up on this thread, Elise Labott and Tim Lister of CNN say their “diplomatic source” stated the courier in question was “Abu Ahmad.” CNN then cites the leaked Gitmo file for Mohammed al Qahtani. Obama administration officials have described the courier as KSM’s “protégé” and the contents of Qahtani’s file jibe with that description.

Qahtani “received computer training from al-Qaida member Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti in preparation for his mission to the US,” the file reads. KSM “had al-Kuwaiti teach [Qahtani] to send email” because KSM “informed [Qahtani] when someone went on a mission, he would need to know how to send messages and email was safer than talking on the phone.” This is consistent with how the other 9/11 hijackers were trained to send emails (using code words and the like) prior to their deployment to the U.S. “Al-Kuwaiti took [Qahtani] to a local internet cafe for his training.”

Abu Ahmad al-Kuwaiti is described as a “senior al-Qaida facilitator and subordinate of” KSM in the file. Al-Kuwaiti worked in “the al-Qaida media house operated by KSM” and “served as a courier.”

Another al Qaeda facilitator stated that al-Kuwaiti traveled with Osama bin Laden and Gitmo’s analysts surmised that he may be “one of the individuals” Qahtani identified as accompanying Osama bin Laden prior to the escape from Tora Bora in late 2001.

Press reports say that KSM and Abu Faraj al Libbi gave up information on the courier, including his nom de guerre. In addition, other reports say that “detainees” at Gitmo gave up information on the courier. And now there are at least two accounts fingering Qahtani as the Gitmo detainee who told authorities about the courier. It is possible that all versions of the story are true, with multiple detainees giving up information on the courier. We’ll have to wait and see.

Either way, this is sure to “rekindle” (as the title of Isikoff’s piece says) the debate over interrogations. KSM and al Libbi were initially held in CIA black sites and subjected to enhanced interrogation techniques before being transferred to Gitmo. Qahtani was subjected to a specially-approved interrogation regime at Gitmo – one of the few ever implemented there – after the FBI repeatedly failed to get any information out of him.

Thomas Joscelyn is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The successes of the CIA and other intelligence agencies, the old saying goes, are never known and the failures are never forgotten. The takedown of Osama bin Laden by Navy SEALs, who were guided onto their target by the work of hundreds of intelligence officers around the world, is a welcome exception to this rule. In a similar way, the successful strike on bin Laden forces us to take a fresh look at the notion that enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) are not useful or effective. If recent comments from high-level officials are any indication, EITs played an important part in the hunt for and elimination of the terror mastermind.

Ever since 9/11, the CIA has been pounded for not “connecting the dots.” The “dots” in the world of intelligence-gathering can be anything—individuals, places, times, targets, dates, fragments of messages, inscrutable codes—but they mean nothing to policymakers unless or until an intelligence analyst can draw a line from one dot to another and thereby paint at least part of a picture.

That connecting line is crucial. And in the case of taking down bin Laden, that connecting line was apparently provided by sources that were subjected to EITs, according to an NBC interview of CIA director Leon Panetta.

The most likely source to provide what NBC calls “the thread of information” about bin Laden’s trusted courier was Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM), who masterminded the 9/11 attacks.

According to the Associated Press, KSM, while being held in a CIA prison somewhere in Eastern Europe, divulged nicknames of key bin Laden aides and couriers. Although he had been subjected to water-boarding, or simulated drowning, several times prior to divulging the names, KSM turned over these fragments of info long after agents had stopped using the technique. Obama administration officials concede, however, that “U.S. intelligence did not learn the identity of the courier until after the CIA interrogation program was terminated,” Reuters reports. In other words, it is possible fear of another round of water-boarding had an impact on KSM.

“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer, told AP.

In fact, Panetta says, “intelligence garnered from water-boarded detainees was used to track down al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and kill him,” according to NBC’s reporting. “We had a multiple source—a multiple series of sources—that provided information with regards to the situation,” according to Panetta. “Clearly some of it came from detainees and the interrogation of detainees, but we also had information from other sources as well.”

Rep. Peter King (R-NY), was less opaque. “The road to bin Laden began with water-boarding,” he told NBC News. As chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and a member of the Permanent Select Intelligence Committee, King would know.

In the cold calculus of this war, King has concluded that the ends justify the means, that innocent life is more important than a terrorist’s comfort: “I use the example of September 10th, 2001, if we had captured Mohammed Atta and we knew he was going to kill thousands of Americans but we didn’t know when or where, are we saying now you wouldn’t hold his head under water to save 3,000 lives?”

When put that way, most Americans would agree with King’s sentiment, and understandably so. When characterized as torture, Americans become a bit more squeamish about EITs, and understandably so.

The reason the “thread” that led the CIA and the SEALs to bin Laden is such a big deal is President Barack Obama’s very vocal views on EITs. Water-boarding “violates our ideals and our values,” Obama said in 2009. “I do believe that it is torture…And that is why I put an end to these practices.”

The Bush administration, on the other hand, rejected the characterization of EITs as torture and limited the use of EITs to a small handful of individuals. “We used this technique on three people,” President George W. Bush said in an interview after leaving office. “We gained…information to protect the country. And it was the right thing to do as far as I’m concerned.”

It’s a policy difference, a difference of worldviews and philosophy, and that’s what elections are about. Obama’s 2009 executive order that reversed Bush administration policy on EITs authorizes only those interrogation techniques approved by the U.S. Army Field Manual. The problem is, those techniques may not have—probably would not have—persuaded KSM to say much of anything.

The intelligence community in general and the Bush administration in particular have been forced to defend their post-9/11 tactics ad nauseam and criticized for not connecting all the pre-9/11 dots. Now that those tactics are helping to connect the dots—and in fact clearing a path all the way to bin Laden—perhaps it’s time to stop criticizing them.

Alan Dershowitz was on cable defending the value of "enhanced interrogation".

More or less he said that if "we" as a nation are going to prohibit this under any circumstances than we should accept the FACT that we may not be getting information that will help save lives and thus an increased risk. When he was pushed he ultimately came out and (unlike in the past) said he is against it but he states it is niave and frankly lying when people claim this does not get information that is helpful.

He was clearly saying liberals are being very dishonest when they say torture doesn't work.

Finally one liberal who is honest.

Of course torture works! If the person really knows anything they will give it up. If they don't yes they will offer false information.Common sense. Only in the movies do we see the hero get tortured fro days and not give in. No one in their right mind thinks this is reality.

Before the interrogations, the U.S. knew little about al Qaeda in the immediate aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Years later, the CIA and military had accumulated a large database of ongoing plots and the identities of terrorists, the WikiLeaks files show.

"The WikiLeaks documents provide still additional evidence that intelligence gained from CIA detainees not only helped lead us to Osama bin Laden, it helped us disrupt a number of follow-on attacks that had been set in motion after 9/11," said Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter.

"Without this program, we would not have gone nearly 10 years without another catastrophic attack on the homeland. This is quite possibly the most important, and most successful, intelligence program in modern times. But instead of medals, the people behind this program have been given subpoenas."

He was referring to Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.'s launch of a criminal investigation of CIA officers who conducted the "enhanced" interrogations, some of which the Obama administration has dubbed "torture."

The killing of Osama bin Laden underscores the value of the vast intelligence database. The treasure trove of information includes the identities of terrorists operating abroad, plots to kill civilians and details on how al Qaeda used a network of couriers for clandestine communication.

Public disclosure of the interrogation windfall began in April by the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks, which obtained hundreds of classified U.S. reports on detainees written by Joint Task Force Guantanamo, the military unit in charge of the prison at U.S. Naval Base Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

As of Thursday, WikiLeaks had released 765 of 779 Gitmo files.

The files show that prisoner Abu Farajal al-Libi, al Qaeda's No. 3 and a close aide to bin Laden, first disclosed the terrorist master's special courier to the CIA. It was the agency's ability to find and track the messenger that ultimately led a team of Navy SEALs to bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where he was killed early on May 2.

Supporters of sending terrorist suspects to Guantanamo Bay — which the Obama administration has vowed to shutter, though its initial deadline has come and gone — for trials at military commissions say the prison provided a single collection point to assess and cross-check intelligence on an enemy the United States knew little about.

"We learned a tremendous amount about the operation, not only in Afghanistan but the organizational structure and how they were operating outside the immediate combat area, for example in Europe," said retired Brig. Gen. Thomas L. Hemingway, the Pentagon's top legal adviser to the commissions' office during Guantanamo's early days.

Gen. Hemingway recalled a case when the military command in Afghanistan was looking for a senior Taliban commander. Interrogators found a detainee who knew the suspect. The detainee drew a diagram of his compound. Aerial surveillance located the home and led to the commander's capture.

"There was a lot of actionable intelligence that was developed down there for a long time," Gen. Hemingway said.

Hunt for bin Laden

In the hunt for bin Laden, the files show al-Libi provided critical information. The CIA used so-called enhanced-interrogation techniques on al-Libi but did not subject him to waterboarding — the most controversial of techniques, which also included stress positions, slapping, shaking and dousing captives with cold water.

"In July 2003, [al Libi] received a letter from [bin Laden's] designated courier, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan, requesting detainee take on the responsibility of collecting donations, organizing travel and distributing funds to families in Pakistan," the document stated.

"[Bin Laden] stated detainee would be the official messenger between [bin Laden] and others in Pakistan. In mid-2003, detainee moved his family to Abbottabad, PK, and worked between Abbottabad and Peshawar."

U.S. officials said the name provided to interrogators was false. But the intelligence added to the other bits of data that helped the U.S. learn how bin Laden planned to direct al Qaeda from Pakistan, the real name of his special courier and the connection of the group to Abbottabad, where the courier moved around 2006.

The courier, who eventually led the U.S. to the compound unwittingly, was killed in the raid. The Obama administration has not identified that person's name.

Other plots

An earlier declassified CIA report on Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed reveals that he disclosed the identities of several operatives and the status of a number of planned attacks.

One plan called for commandeering commercial airliners at London's Heathrow Airport. Authorities broke up the plot.

Mohammed was one of three al Qaeda leaders waterboarded by the CIA. The Bush administration called it part of "enhanced" interrogations. The Obama administration has labeled it "torture."

• Ramzi Bin al-Shibh revealed how operatives gained visas to enter the West, often by gaining acceptance to an educational institute. If they were denied visas at U.S. embassies in the Middle East, they would try to gain entrance to Europe and apply from there.

• A terrorist identified as Hambali, the leader of the al Qaeda-funded Islamiyah network in South Asia, provided extensive information on his terrorist contacts in Indonesia. Responsible for the 2002 Bali bombing that killed more than 200, Hambali disclosed the existence of the "Infraq Fisabillah" fund used to finance travel by terrorists to and from Pakistan for training.

• Abu Zubaydah, another high-ranking bin Laden aide, provided a wealth of information on al Qaeda's ability to forge documents used to gain access to the West. Zubaydah, for example, forged medical files to show that a terrorist had been tortured. The supposed victims then used the phony medical history to gain political asylum in Europe or the United States.

"Detainee has intimate knowledge of al Qaeda's use of a document committee for forging documents such as identification cards, visas, and passports," the Zubaydah file states, adding, "Detainee has provided a wealth of information on terrorist organizations. He has provided intelligence on their operations and leadership. Detainee continues to be a valuable source of intelligence for operations still occurring today."• Mohammed Abdah al-Nashiri, another close bin Laden aide, operated a separate al Qaeda operation in Yemen that received aid from Yemeni security forces. The revelation showed that, as in Pakistan, a U.S. ally supposedly working with the West actually was helping the enemy.

One of three al Qaeda captives waterboarded, Nashiri provided the names of a number of operatives still in the field.

Birthers, Truthers and Interrogation Deniers The latest lunacy to get a popular hearing is the idea that harsh CIA interrogations yielded no useful intelligence. I guess we should toss out the 9/11 Commission Report..

BY MICHAEL HAYDEN

For all of its well-deserved reputation for pragmatism, American popular culture frequently nurtures or at least tolerates preposterous views and theories. Witness the 9/11 "truthers" who, lacking any evidence whatsoever, claim that 9/11 was a Bush administration plot. And then we have the "birthers" who, even in the face of clear contrary evidence, take as an article of faith that President Obama was not born in the United States and hence is not eligible to hold his current office.

Let me add a third denomination to this faith-based constellation: interrogation deniers, i.e., individuals who hold that the enhanced interrogation techniques used against CIA detainees have never yielded useful intelligence. They, of course, cling to this view despite all evidence to the contrary, despite the testimony of four CIA directors, and despite Mr. Obama's chief counterterrorism adviser John Brennan's statement that there's been "a lot of information that has come out from these interrogation procedures that the agency has in fact used against the real hard-core terrorists."

The recent dispute over what strains of intelligence led to the killing of Osama bin Laden highlights the phenomenon. It must appear to outside observers like a theological debate over how many angels can reside on the head of a pin. So we see carefully tailored arguments designed to discount the value of enhanced interrogations: the first mention of the courier's name came from a detainee not in CIA custody; CIA detainees gave false and misleading information about the courier; there is no way to confirm that information obtained through enhanced interrogation was the decisive intelligence that led us directly to bin Laden.

All fair enough as far as they go. But let the record show that when I was first briefed in 2007 about the brightening prospect of pursuing bin Laden through his courier network, a crucial component of the briefing was information provided by three CIA detainees, all of whom had been subjected to some form of enhanced interrogation. One of the most alerting pieces of evidence was that two of the detainees who had routinely been cooperative and truthful (after they had undergone enhanced techniques) were atypically denying apparent factual data—a maneuver taken as a good sign that the CIA was on to something important.

So that there is no ambiguity, let me be doubly clear: It is nearly impossible for me to imagine any operation like the May 2 assault on bin Laden's compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that would not have made substantial use of the trove of information derived from CIA detainees, including those on whom enhanced techniques had been used.

.It is easy to imagine the concerns at the political level as the CIA built its case that bin Laden was in the Abbottabad compound, and it became obvious that detainee data was an important thread of intelligence. To his credit, and obviously reflecting this reality, White House spokesman Jay Carney has not denied that fact but correctly pointed out that there were multiple co-dependent threads that led to this success.

In response to a direct question on the CBS Evening News about enhanced interrogation and the bin Laden success, CIA Director Leon Panetta confirmed on May 3 that, "Obviously there was some valuable information that was derived through those kind of interrogations." He also added that it was an "open question" whether the information could have been elicited through other means, implicitly contradicting those who claim that other means would have produced the same information.

Let me add that this is not a discussion about the merits or the appropriateness of any interrogation technique. Indeed, I personally took more than half of the techniques (including waterboarding) off the table in 2007 because American law had changed, our understanding of the threat had deepened, and we were now blessed with additional sources of information. We can debate what was appropriate then, or now, but this is a discussion about a particular historical fact: Information derived from enhanced interrogation techniques helped lead us to bin Laden.

And so those who are prone to condemn the actions of those who have gone before (while harvesting the fruits of their efforts) might take pause. I've been personally asked about the appropriateness of waterboarding and—recognizing the immense challenge of balancing harsh treatment with saving innocent lives—usually respond: "I thank God that I did not have to make that decision." At the same time, I thank those who preceded me, made such decisions and thereby spared me the worst of the dilemma. Those who deny the usefulness of enhanced interrogation techniques might consider similar caution.

Somali Man Tied to Militants Was Detained Aboard U.S. Navy Ship for Months

A Somali man accused of ties to two Islamist militant groups was captured by the American military in April and interrogated for months aboard a navy ship without being warned of his Miranda rights to remain silent and have a lawyer. On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced that the man had been flown to New York City to face prosecution before a civilian court.

In an indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was charged with nine counts related to accusations that he provided support to the Somalia-based Al Shabaab and the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Warsame was captured on April 19, and a plane carrying him arrived in New York City around midnight Monday night, officials said.

Somali Man Tied to Militants Was Detained Aboard U.S. Navy Ship for Months

A Somali man accused of ties to two Islamist militant groups was captured by the American military in April and interrogated for months aboard a navy ship without being warned of his Miranda rights to remain silent and have a lawyer. On Tuesday, the Obama administration announced that the man had been flown to New York City to face prosecution before a civilian court.

In an indictment unsealed in the Southern District of New York, Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame was charged with nine counts related to accusations that he provided support to the Somalia-based Al Shabaab and the Yemen-based Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Mr. Warsame was captured on April 19, and a plane carrying him arrived in New York City around midnight Monday night, officials said.

When the Casey Anthony verdict came in Tuesday, my mind went back to my days as a young federal prosecutor. I tried a lot of bank-robbery cases and only lost one. That’s the one I remember.

The defendant’s name was “Mutt” Matlock, and he taught me a few things about juries and “slam dunk” cases. A man who looked an awful lot like Mutt held up a bank in rural middle Tennessee. He used a Lugar pistol, had a piece of tape on his face, and made off with several thousand dollars in cash. One of the cashiers gave the police a description, and they beat a hot trail to Mutt’s door. They found Mutt, a Lugar, a piece of tape on a blanket under the bed, and several thousand dollars in sequentially numbered bills. For me, it was one of those slam-dunk cases Eric Holder likes to talk about so much.

At the trial we proved all of this. I couldn’t believe my good luck when Mutt’s lawyer put him on the stand, giving me a chance to cross examine him. But Mutt put on the good ol’ country-boy routine. He had no idea how all that stuff got to his place. I tore him to shreds, taking him through the details and the mountain of evidence against him. Mutt was just bewildered. “I’d like to help you out, Mr. Thompson, but I just don’t know,” he said. He was literally defenseless against my onslaught.

When the jury came back with a not-guilty verdict, I almost fell out of my chair. When we adjourned, I asked the foreman how they reached their result. “Well,” he said, “he was so dumb and befuddled, we just didn’t think he could have pulled off a precision bank robbery like that.” My brilliant cross examination had helped Mutt implement his strategy.

As the sportscasters say after a big upset, “That’s why they play the game. No outcome is ever a sure thing, when you’re dealing with human skills, emotions, and understanding. The Anthony case is just another reminder of this. But the sensational nature of the case aside, there are some other reminders to be drawn, some of national import. For example:

In the first place, a trial is not about obtaining justice as much as it’s about implementing a system of rules. Following the rules is more likely to produce justice than if you don’t. That’s why they call it the “the rule of law,” not “the rule of justice.”

Casey may have gotten off on an insanity defense. I know that this defense wasn’t pleaded as such, but, Casey’s having been caught in the most ridiculous, mind-boggling avalanche of lies, her lawyer basically argued that she did what people do when they’re as screwed up as this woman appears to be. That would explain her partying after the disappearance of her daughter and other bizarre behavior. What look like the actions of a murderer, may just be the actions of a nut-job. Not exactly like Mutt’s case, but in the same ballpark

The prosecution had almost 400 pieces of evidence. Sometimes four is better than 400. Most of the 400 is bound to have holes in them of some sort. Pretty soon the jury is concentrating on the holes and not the solid pieces. So “how can you not have reasonable doubt with so many holes?”

Although there was plenty of it, criticism of the defense lawyers is necessarily uninformed. We don’t know what they know from their investigation. Most important, we don’t know what their client is telling them or what restrictions she is placing on them. On the other hand it doesn’t necessarily mean they did a good job just because they won. Some cases are going to be won regardless.

For example…

Sometimes a case is won or lost as soon as a jury is impaneled. Although you don’t know it at the time, and you never really know for sure, I’m convinced that if by skill or luck a defense lawyer gets one or more jurors hardwired in his favor, he’s probably going to at least get a hung jury, almost regardless of the evidence. Some people are very reluctant to pass judgment on others and will not convict upon circumstantial evidence, no matter how strong, even though the law requires it. Often a lawyer simply can’t get truthful answers about this from prospective jurors on voir dire. A prospective juror may not even know this about himself. That’s why lawyers so often rely on prejudices more than anything else: Blacks are more sympathetic. Those of German heritage are by-the-book. A young woman is likely to be harder on another young woman, etc.

Jurors sometimes confuse “reasonable doubt” with any doubt. The “any doubt” standard would require at least a confession or personally witnessing the defendant committing the crime. I say “at least,” because people sometimes admit to crimes they have not committed. And, of course, if a person witnessed the crime he would be disqualified from sitting on the jury. This makes for “easy pickins” for a competent defense lawyer, who can raise at least a smidgen of doubt about even the most reliable piece of evidence.

Until the Anthony verdict, lawyers thought that if you promise something in your opening statement and you didn’t deliver it, then you would be punished by the jury. It happened in the O. J. Simpson case, but that case was so laced with racial elements it hardly stands as precedent for much else. Casey’s lawyer promised “molestation” and “accidental drowning” and produced no evidence of either. The jury was instructed to consider only the evidence, not lawyers’ statements, but it is likely that some or all of them could not erase such dramatic and troubling images from their minds as they heard the evidence and thought about how the evidence squared with what the lawyer had said. It may have helped produce reasonable doubt. This is going to have to be addressed in Florida and perhaps other jurisdictions. Either the jury should be specifically instructed that no proof was produced and cannot be considered or the lawyer should be disciplined, or both. This is not something that lawyers should be rewarded for.

My read on the case? Guilty of murder beyond a reasonable doubt. You don’t make an accident look like a murder, and you don’t place duct tape over the nose and mouth of a child who is already dead. I simply think that you had some jurors like the ones I’ve described. These things happen. People are fallible. Our system is fallible.

Apparently our own president and attorney general don’t understand this. It is with amazement that I read that a Somali terrorist is being imported into the United States to be tried in a U.S. civil court and accorded all the rights of an American citizen — anything to keep him out of Guantanamo and the military tribunal where he belongs.

We gladly run the risk of setting the guilty free in order to protect the rights of American citizens. Now we are running the same risk for the benefit for those with whom we are at war. One principle is as old as our country. The other was invented by this administration. Clearly, they learned nothing from the Casey Anthony trial. Either that or they are willing to run the risk to us all for the sake of their rigid and misinformed ideology.

A Spanish lawyer has formally accused Barack Obama of crimes against humanity for ordering the assassination of Osama bin Laden.

4:04PM BST 17 Jul 2011

Daniel Fiol lodged a written complaint at the International Criminal Court accusing the US president of breaching the Geneva Convention.

Navy Seals acting on Mr Obama's orders shot the al-Qaeda leader dead on May 2 after storming his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan.

In his written complaint, the Majorca-based lawyer said bin Laden should have been "pursued, arrested, tried and convicted" on behalf of "the victims of some terrible and appalling atrocities". The killing of bin Laden was even worse as it took place in foreign territory, Pakistan, without the permission of that government, he said.

"I am not being paid by al-Qaeda," Mr Fiol joked.

Former prime minister Tony Blair has said he would not have hesitated to order the assassination of bin Laden if the decision had been his.

Woof, I'm begining to think that letting the terrorist go and then killing them later might be the best way to close Gitmo.

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — NATO and Afghan forces have killed a former Guantanamo detainee who returned to Afghanistan to become a key al-Qaida ally, international officials said Saturday.

The militant's death was a reminder of the risks of trying to end a controversial detention system without letting loose people who will launch attacks on Americans.

Sabar Lal Melma, who was released from Guantanamo in 2007, had been organizing attacks in eastern Kunar province and funding insurgent operations, NATO spokesman Capt. Justin Brockhoff said.

A NATO statement described Melma as a "key affiliate of the al-Qaida network" who was in contact with senior al-Qaida members in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Another former detainee who joined the al-Qaida franchise in Yemen was killed in a recent U.S. airstrike there.

Troops surrounded Melma's house in Jalalabad city on Friday night and shot him dead when he emerged from the building holding an AK-47 assault rifle. Several other people were detained, NATO said.

A guard at the house, Mohammad Gul, said a group of American soldiers scaled the walls of the compound around 11 p.m. and stormed the house, shooting Melma in the assault. Three others were detained, Gul said.

Melma joined a long list of detainees believed to have reconnected with al-Qaida. In 2009, the Pentagon said 61, approximately 11 percent, of the detainees released from Guantanamo had rejoined the fight. Experts have questioned the validity of that number.

About 520 Guantanamo detainees have been released from custody or transferred to prisons elsewhere in the world.

There are 171 inmates still held at the facility in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. President Barack Obama signed an executive order in 2009 just after taking office asking for it to be shut down within the year, but it has remained open as the administration has worked to find ways to deal with the inmates.

After the fall of the Taliban, Melma, 49, was given the rank of brigadier general in the Afghan National Army and placed in charge of approximately 600 border security troops in Kunar, according to a file made public by WikiLeaks.

But he was suspected of still helping carry out rocket attacks against U.S. troops, and he was captured in August 2002 while attending a meeting with U.S. military officials in Asadabad and transferred to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in October that year.

While imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. determined he was a "probable facilitator for al-Qaida members" and was also thought to have links to Pakistan's intelligence service. In 2005, he was described as a "medium risk" to the United States.

He was sent back to Afghanistan in September 2007.

NATO said in a statement that coalition forces have captured or killed more than 40 al-Qaida insurgents in eastern Afghanistan this year.

In June 2010, then CIA Director Leon Panetta said only 50 to 100 al-Qaida operatives continued to operate inside Afghanistan. It's not clear if Panetta was referring to commanders or foot soldiers.

In Kabul, meanwhile, a political standoff over the makeup of the legislature continued as police escorted a handful of new lawmakers into parliament despite protests from sitting parliamentarians that the new group is illegitimate.

In the southern city of Kandahar, officials said NATO forces killed a child and a shopkeeper who were caught up in a firefight between a military patrol and a gunman.

NATO said one of its service members was killed in an insurgent attack on Saturday in southern Afghanistan but not provide details.

The Danish military said one of its soldiers was killed in a roadside bomb that exploded as a foot patrol was moving past in southern Afghanistan's volatile Helmand province, but it was not immediately clear if that announcement referred to the same attack.

Woof, If we can do it in Pakistan with Bin Laden, why not here? It just seems to me that it's unfair and costly that International law allows for it everywhere but here. Where's the equal justice? I'm telling you we keep getting the raw end of the deal. P.C.

Woof, If we can do it in Pakistan with Bin Laden, why not here? It just seems to me that it's unfair and costly that International law allows for it everywhere but here. Where's the equal justice? I'm telling you we keep getting the raw end of the deal. P.C.

Oh, you think we need to try to win this war? No, winning wars is what we used to do, it's as dated as a two parent family and monogamy. Now we must sabotage ourselves left we offend those who are trying to kill us.

Woof, I thought we were keeping these wars going indefinitely so we wouldn't have to declare victory and pull out in order to keep Iran from taking over Iraq, and Russia and China from splitting up Afghanistan. Which until now I thought was very clever strategy, you bubble buster! P.C.

Woof, I thought we were keeping these wars going indefinitely so we wouldn't have to declare victory and pull out in order to keep Iran from taking over Iraq, and Russia and China from splitting up Afghanistan. P.C.

Even easier to win totally and contain Iran Russia/China. But we'd need the will to do so.

The Constitution provides for defending the country from insurrection, which by definition includes warring by citizens. George Washington himself put down Shay's Revolt. Lincoln put down the South-- with truly massive kills of uniformed soldiers, none of whom were arrested, read their rights, and given a trial. (I might add that spies were promptly shot and/or hung) Here we have American citizens waging war on the United States as part of a transnational religious fascist movement. The US Congress has recognized the existence of this war/conflict and Awlaki was an egregious and highly active actor in the waging of this war. This included participation in the recruitment and planning of the Crispy Weiner bomber attack on American soil. Frankly, this seems like a slam dunk to me. Two ears, one bullet , , , or a missile up the ass.

The operation to kill Aulaqi involved CIA and military assets under CIA control. A former senior intelligence official said that the CIA would not have killed an American without such a written opinion.

A second American killed in Friday’s attack was Samir Khan, a driving force behind Inspire, the English-language magazine produced by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. An administration official said the CIA did not know Khan was with Aulaqi, but they also considered Khan a belligerent whose presence near the target would not have stopped the attack.

The circumstances of Khan’s death were reminiscent of a 2002 U.S. drone strike in Yemen that targeted Abu Ali al-Harithi, a Yemeni al-Qaeda operative accused of planning the 2000 attack on the USS Cole. That strike also killed a U.S. citizen who the CIA knew was in Harithi’s vehicle but who was a target of the attack.

The Obama administration has spoken in broad terms about its authority to use military and paramilitary force against al-Qaeda and associated forces beyond “hot,” or traditional, battlefields such as Iraq or Afghanistan. Officials said that certain belligerents aren’t shielded because of their citizenship.

“As a general matter, it would be entirely lawful for the United States to target high-level leaders of enemy forces, regardless of their nationality, who are plotting to kill Americans both under the authority provided by Congress in its use of military force in the armed conflict with al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces as well as established international law that recognizes our right of self-defense,” an administration official said in a statement Friday.

President Obama and various administration officials referred to Aulaqi publicly for the first time Friday as the “external operations” chief for al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a label that may be intended to underscore his status as an operational leader who posed an imminent threat.